Bernard Bannerman

Books

No one falls as viciously, as painfully or as messily as lawyers. Jack Nicholas, left-wing barrister, was supposed to have died in an accident. Drunk, said the coroner. Murdered, said his mother. Enter Dave Woolf, ex-solicitor, boozer and down-at-heel private eye.

It was, as Dave Woolf said, ‘the sort of thing that doesn’t happen in England’. High-court corruption, gangsters, fire-bombs and a bit of murder on the side - all of it against the backdrop of a family drama raging through London, the West Country and the South of France. Nor is it the sort of thing that solicitors ought to be investigating. But Woolf is no ordinary solicitor.

Dave Woolf, solicitor and private eye, has had respectability thrust upon him. He’s also been saddled with the most sensational case of his career. High Court Judge Sir Russel Orbach is a pillar of the establishment and a doting guardian to the orphaned Frankie.

The body of a woman solicitor was discovered by staff arriving yesterday morning at the Holborn offices of the prestigious London solicitors, Mather’s. Katrina Pankhurst, 32 had been shot. Police are investigating.’ A murder on the premises is bad news for a law firm. It discourages clients. It also discourages recruits which is damaging to a firm like Mather’s with a reputation.